Sozo
by Gender Outlaw
Summary: Tobias is human, whether he wants to be or not.. - Dark. Human!Tobias.


_Note_: Where does this title come from, you ask?

Well, recently I visited a lecture on prayers. And this was a word the speaker mentioned. I don't remember the origin, but the way she spoke, this one word seemed to have a certain spiritual, healing tone..

Italics is the past. The quote that's not a quote is from Megamorphs 4.

* * *

**SOZO:  
_to save, to heal. _**

* * *

"Any sign of him?" Cassie asks as Rachel slides back in the barn through the open doors, folds her eagle's wings, and perches on the hay to begin demorphing.

Rachel shakes her still feathered head, saying, in thought-speak as her limbs begin to grow. _((He's been gone for days. What could have happened to him?)) _Her unspoken fear, unsaid questions lingering about in the space between.

Cassie gives her full attention for once, the cages of fur and feathers shadowing her back howling as usual. But she is not holding them, not feeding them, not working with them as she says, tasting Rachel's unease so strong, "Everything's going to be fine.

You'll see, Rachel. Tobias is smart. He knows what to do."

* * *

_' ' My name is Tobias. I'm a human. I'm a hawk. If you want to find something in the forest, you'd do well to ask me._

_There's nothing I don't see. ' ' _  
- The Test, by K.A. Applegate

* * *

_It is another early Saturday above the Yeerk pool as the Animorphs try to sneak unnoticed out of various entrances._

_Rachel pokes her head around the corner of the dressing room in the mall, motioning to Cassie behind her when the way is clear. Both of them trying to dart away and become invisible in the crowd as quickly as possible._

_Marco in the laundromat across from his entrance, stealing slightly-wet clothes from the washing machines._

_Jake in the executive bathroom in a downtown skyscraper, trying to negotiate his way out. Saying he just came to see his dad, that he didn't know this bathroom was for employee's only. Can't you please excuse me just this once? I promise to never do it again._

_The guard believing him, unwillingly, and letting him pass. Watching Jake from the corner of his eye as the boy tries to act like he belongs. Moving quickly to the elevators in a nonchalant fashion._

_And, Aximili and Tobias, both in human morphs to blend in, are walking out of the storage freezer in an Italian restaurant downtown. Tobias grabbing two uniforms from a row of lockers and handing one to Ax._

_Then putting one on himself as he leads Ax out, both of them sneaking through the back door of the kitchen, ducking away from the chef and cooks to escape by the back alleyway that connects the restaurant to the rest of the city._

_They make it outside just as another throng of people enter the shops on either side of them, pushing through and past them._

_There are so many, the street is so crowded, there is no way, no place, that Tobias suggests that Ax go back into the alley and hide behind the dumpster and demorph there._

_Barring the door of the restaurant with a spare board under the handle. Saying he will keep watch over Ax from the entrance to the alley. Telling his friend to be careful and hunch down._

_Saying that they will fly away together._

_And Tobias is standing there, blocking the view down the narrow alley with his body and trying not to be too suspicious while Ax is doing his best._

_And then, then he sees._

_He sees his mother._

* * *

_Tobias only has memories of her pictures, nothing real. Nothing but images of images._

_But, standing there with his back to the darkness and danger, his eye instantly catches that flash of gold locks. Recognizes that face as it passes him by. Stops, stares, starts._

_Moves before he has any knowledge of what he is doing. Following her, running to catch up to her, noticing the dog, noticing the scars. Starts again, jerking backwards for an instant as, suddenly, everything makes perfect sense._

"Who are you?" _he wants to ask. He wants to hug her, to hit her, to yell at her. He wants to know, wants her to know. Where have you been? Did you think of me? Why didn't you write? Call?_

_Where have you been? Where were you when I needed you?_

_In the end, standing behind her at the corner, waiting for the light to change, all he does is reach out. Tug softly at the hem of her sleeve with trembling hands. Swallowing past the dryness in his throat as he tries to speak._

_Only on the second attempt forcing out the words, "I am your son."_

_And she turns. Tightens her grip on the handle of the dog's harness as she says quietly, "Are you?"_

_Him replying, "My name is Tobias." Swallowing, adding shyly, slowly, "I only have pictures of you." Touching her on the arm, gently. Shuffling his feet, his mouth dry and his eyes not._

_The moments passing by tiredly, dragging out until the red light above them, warning them not to cross, not to tempt death flashes a bright green. Dings._

_The dog darting suddenly forward, Loren being pulled along, off-balance. Tobias still holding onto her arm._

_Moving with her, following as she steps out onto the street. As Champ the guide dog leads them between the white lines of the path._

_As the car screeches, hits the brakes ineffective inches from them._

_Hits them._

* * *

"Good morning," the nurse says cheerfully.

He is groggy, out of it. He lifts his right arm, which aches, is sore, and rubs his throbbing head. Swallows, feels a hitch in his breathing. Feels swollen, bruised. Massive. As if his whole body is pulsing with the pain.

He tries to concentrate. Feels there is something wrong. Something he is missing.

But what? What is gone?

_Everything_, he hears in his head and doesn't understand.

Then he shifts in the bed, and the pain shoots up his side like he is being split down the middle, torn right in two. Then the nurse says they were sorry but they couldn't save the woman, that she got the full weight of the impact, shielded him. Saved him.

Asks if he knows who she was. If he knows who he is.

Then, he sees the sky, and knows.

* * *

For weeks he slips in and out of consciousness. Never staying awake longer than a few minutes. He begins to fall asleep at the drop of a hat, to slip into a coma-like state.

He begins to fear sleep, to treat it like death waiting on the wisps. Thinks it will devour him, eat him alive and spit nothing out.

Panic and paranoia consume him. He flinches at the slightest noise. Tries to get up several times, only to pass out before he's even upright. Is certain there is life in the shadows of his room. Ghosts haunting him.

He fakes sleep when the nurses come, ends up passing out anyways. Jerks out of their grasp when they reach for him, tears out his stitches. Agitates his broken arm, his broken leg, his broken ribs.

Screams under the morphine, silent, wordless. Thrashes in his sleep, gets tied down.

He is sweating and swearing under his breath, the words moving like a prayer through him. The thick leather straps buckling around him so tightly he can't even move his good arm. Can't escape. Can't run away.

Fly.

* * *

_' ' Tobias, the friend I couldn't save. ' ' _  
- The Attack, by K.A. Applegate

* * *

From his room, Tobias can see the nurse station, watches them come and go like worker bees, buzzing about carrying clipboards. Circling around patients, charts, the phone. Wisp of wind.

To and fro, three at a time, four at a time.

He jerks against the strap so hard his arm slips out, bloody, torn. He pulls out a dinner knife, blunt. A fork. Both from beneath his right arm where he had hidden them, the utensils pressing so hard against his skin the marks stay for days.

Rips them through the straps. Breaking the knife, tearing the tongs off the fork. But slipping the pieces between the buckle and the leather. Loosening them, breaking himself free.

Waits, until the coast is clear.

Sits up, gets nauseous, dizzy with fatigue. Is knocked so heavily against unconsciousness, he is slammed down against the bed, throwing up over the side before passing out.

* * *

He has been moved by the time he wakes again. Turned onto his back, the bile cleaned up and washed away.

His bloody wrist frayed by the strap, bandaged. Cleaned.

But the straps gone. Removed from his bed, if not his nightmares.

And, sitting in the chair which has been empty beside his bed for as long as he's been here, is a nurse. Wearing a name tag that he has to squint his eyes to read, that says "Carla" in thin black letters.

Clara, who is holding a glass of milk and offers it to him. Who helps him hold it, helps him drink it. Even as his mind is racing, roaring, wondering what drugs are in it, what it's going to do to him.

She says he is looking better. She asks how he's feeling.

He has no answer to give, and stares hazily past her into his own denial.

* * *

It's almost a whole week before Tobias is able to sit up properly. Stagger to the bathroom with help, a nurse on each side and his pride, his dignity keeping him upright.

He sees the nurse station empty for the first time all day, though it is near midnight, and starts for it.

Ends up pitching over the side of the bed and choking on a scream. Struggles to stand. Grabbing the bed for balance, the empty chair, the nightstand. Bracing himself against the wall like a drunk man against water as the world pitches against him.

Fights to find his feet.

Slides across the wall, still leaning against it, barely upright. Pushes himself to the door, grabs on, clings to it.

And stops, standing in the doorway to his room, thinking. Wondering what to do, who to call. Knowing he never had the chance to learn anyone's phone number. Hears a Marco-like voice in his head.

Marco who would say, _"What are you doing, bird-brain? What'll you say to Tom when he answers? How do you even know their numbers are listed?"_

Saying, _"Don't you think it's just a little suspicious, you calling them up out of the blue like this?"_

Saying, _"You know you were never that close with them before Elfangor. You know no one would really believe you calling up some people you barely know to tell them where you are."_

Saying, _"Think about it, you idiot! You're not a headless chicken, don't act like one. Do you really want to put them in danger?"_

And Tobias does think about it. Agrees. But..

Tobias tumbles away from the door, flings himself to the nurses station. Manages to grab onto the counter, clinging with the tips of his fingers, pulls himself up with his pride. Is laying bodily across the table as he grabs the phone.

Pushes papers aside but can't find a phonebook. Dials, calls directory. Asks for the Rehabilitation Clinic.

Gets connected. Hears the phone on the other side start ringing.

Ring and ring and ring.

Then, he realizes that it is after midnight. Tries to think of what to say, what might get his point across, not give him away. And comes up with nothing at all.

Hears again that voice eerily like Marco, so like Marco that Tobias looks around to see a fly, a roach, anything at all out of place. Finding nothing, and only hearing those words repeat again as someone picks up on the other end.

_"Don't you think it's just a little bit suspicious?"_

_"You weren't that close before Elfangor. Why then, logically, would you call them?"_

The voice on the other end mumbling, groggily, saying "Hello? Hello? Is anyone there?"

But there is no answer, Tobias won't speak.

He hangs up, puts the phone back.

Waits for the world to stop spinning again before he struggles back to his room, his white hospital bed.

* * *

Carla has brought him a notebook, pens and pencils. She finds him drawing figures in his mashed potatoes with his fingertips and does this on her own.

He fills the book up with vacant half-formed sketches, and she brings another.

It passes the time well enough, helps him not think about things.

She has brought colored pencils today, and markers. And he is using them to shade the clouds a bright red and orange sunset of the sky he saw every day over the town.

She tilts her head, looks at the book from the side.

And again, as she has for every week, Carla asks, "Isn't there anyone you would like to call, Tobias?"

* * *

He's lost all track of time. He thinks it's been a month, maybe. Feels like a year. The days are long and agonizingly slow, blurring into each other like watercolors.

His wounds bandaged, his body feeling only half-dead, Tobias sneaks out of the hospital. Staggering around with a cast on his leg, and with partly-healed ribs. Gasps as he breathes, as he stumbles.

The streets are empty and the night is high in the sky. His eyes are drawn, by instinct. He tilts his head back and stares with dimmed vision at what's left of the stars he once knew.

All around him, the bright bright lights of the city cast a hazy glow.

With no where to go, he wanders slowly to the direction of the north star, hanging lonely so high above.

* * *

The building is gray and brown, like dirt washed by rain. The windows are old and chipped paint still clings to the corners of the glass.

But the smell of food wafts out to him like a prayer, and he stumbles in. Rundown men and women at the door, slouched over the tables as if drawn there, chatting, laughing. Weary in their demeanor, united in their desolation.

He takes a seat, sore. Grateful just to rest, as someone comes up to him. As someone smiles at him and asks if he would like soup.

A shade of quiet, his manners surface. Says, "Yes. Thank you."

* * *

He sleeps beneath the bridge, lulled into uneasy peace by the roar of the river, the screaming engines above.

He curls into a ball, clutches at his bad leg, sleeps on his good side.

At sundown, he stands on the walkway above, leaning against the rail while the workday rush head home behind him. His arms uplifted on either side, fingers spread to catch the breeze. While, with his eyes closed, he can imagine.

Behind his eyes, he can see the whole world.

* * *

And Jake is bored to tears, his forehead pressed against the cool of the window as his dad drives them home. His mother in the front passenger seat, turned around to talk to Tom. Going over Tom's checklist for college again, and again.

The car sending hypnotic vibrations through his skull, soothing his headache.

The deep, heavy brass thumps from the grates of the bridge weighing heavily on his eyelids. He rests his chin in his hands and relaxes.

And there, framed in a chance vision by the deep red blooms of a setting sun, is a lanky boy with blond hair leaning against the bridge's railing. With arms outstretched as if in flight.

Startled, Jake jerks back, chokes on his own breath. He stares, lost, his eyes following the sight as they pass the boy by.

"Stop!" He yells at his dad, jumping over the divide between the seats, trying to reach the steering wheel.

His mother looks, his father looks. His brother pulls him back to his seat. Pushes him down and says with manufactured concern, "What's wrong Jake? Are you feeling alright?"

Desperate, Jake glances behind the car, doesn't take the time to think, grabs the door handle.

And Tom pulls him back, holds him close. His mother's eyes watching him as if she doesn't know him at all. His father staring through the rear view mirror, says so strongly "_Sit down_", that the words echo through Jake.

Are laced into him. Forces him still as he finally realizes how closely he's being watched. Glances behind him at the string of cars so tightly packed that there is no chance at all of a second look.

A second chance.

The air is stifling, confining. It hurts to breathe and Jake wonders if this is what Tobias feels, all the time in his human morph.

Tom rests his arm around Jake's shoulders, pulls him close as their mother turns around in her seat and faces forward. As their father drives them home, stealing glances at Jake again and again through the rear view mirror.

* * *

_' ' sadly, no one seemed to notice when he simply disappeared. ' '_  
- The Secret, by K.A. Applegate

* * *

Tobias sweats the dawn away, wrestling against sleep, against the confining weight of his own body.

In his dreams he is underground, underwater, buried.

Red hot fire reaches for him from the corners of his vision, sweats him into panic, paranoia. Faces he knows on bodies he doesn't twist and distort. Their words, their voices poison him like acid with fear, burning through his bones, through him.

He is told to wait, is pushed out of the way, against a wall. Blurry shapes that hiss at him and laugh. Red devils that only look human. While someone he doesn't remember is dragged ahead of him. Whose face he should know. Who he could have saved, should have saved.

Wait in line, they say. Wait your turn.

Dragging her by the hair. Throwing this person onto the bed, the beasts grinning. Tearing out the body and soul and, still saying to him, wait.

Wait your turn.

You're next. You won't be going anywhere now.

His muscles clenched so tight he's immobile, he prays in his mind, fiercely, frantically. Backs against the wall. Screams the words in a chant, like a barrier, through his head.

The devil turns, looks over its shoulder in a matter-of-fact way and says, _"That won't do you any good here."_

When Tobias jerks awake, twitching from laying on his back to half standing in one fluid motion, the chant is still running through his head.

_Not me. Not me._

* * *

"Take him," she had said.

When the boy (_his nephew_) was just a toddling little scrap of runny noses and teary eyes. A perfect mimicry of the insanity of his mother at that age, pushed through the piles of clothes and suitcases the woman (_his ex-wife_) had thrown at him from the upstairs window.

Take the boy.

Back and forth. Again and again, take the boy. Take the boy.

And where was he now? In early September, with the leaves crisp and falling and the smell of smoke everywhere in the air, so thick it was an eternal burning. Where was Tobias? Where was his nephew?

_Did you even know he was gone?_

Her voice yelling at him though the receiver, through the earpiece, through his head. _Didn't you even notice he wasn't there?_

The letter from the lawyer's office sitting on the kitchen table between bills and junk mail. Sending a low accusatory, mocking, tone through his head in perfect stereo with her voice.

Where is he? Where is Tobias? Where could he have gone? _How could you not have noticed?_ The boy could be dead, he could be broken, he could be high. He could be laying starved, in the gutter of some alley. He could be lost in an abandoned warehouse, needles in his arm, slowly drowning.

The boy, Tobias.

Quiet, easily startled. A non-provocative, skinny boy with blonde hair that curled, just slightly, in humid weather. Who didn't complain, who liked to stay up all night reading, the pale yellow light reflecting through the hallway.

Who slept with the window open. Knew all the constellations. Collected dinosaurs.

Where was this person?

_He's not in the bottom of your glass,_ her shrill voice coldly stating. Was Tobias drowning too? Struggling just to breathe and finding only liquid in the place of air?

On Saturday, almost two months ago, you got so drunk you thought you could see right through one thing to another, see straight to infinity itself.

Saturday at eleven o'clock in the morning, you got drunk and ran through a red light. Killed one person instantly and injured another.

To wake up the next day, slightly battered, barely bruised, and get asked after the police report if you wanted to see this boy you nearly killed.

_No. _You muttered, in a daze. _No thank you._

The moment of impact itself lost completely from your memory, your mind. With only second-hand knowledge to build it back up again. You left that same day and went home. Sat in front of the TV for hours, not knowing what to do.

What could you have said to this kid you almost destroyed? You're not Tobias' uncle. You're not even a man. You're just a soggy piece of driftwood, drowning.

Go here, they told him. Sit through these classes. Stand up and tell everyone you're an addict, you're lost. Tell them how you've lost it all. How you drowned.

You're on probation, you're being watched. You're lucky, and your lawyer got you off easy.

Come here, do this. Serve community service, pick up garbage for a year. Fill chipped soup bowls while trying not to stare into their eyes. Are they better than you?

Aren't they?

Your truck impounded, smashed, totaled.

Walking to work everyday, leaving early, before sunrise. Walking home, late, with the sun casting deep shadows over the world.

Walking from street to street, wandering, lost. Where are you going? Where is Tobias? Where are you?

Waiting at the street corner for the light to change, the heavy hum of cars all around. He looks away from a little girl with pigtails in her hair, sticky toothless smile holding onto her mother's hand.

The hum of the evening, like a thousand invisible mosquitoes, vibrating through him.

Tobias..

Standing there, across the street. Staring into a bakery shop window.

Tobias?

With a cast on his leg. Bruised and battered. But alive.

* * *

"He's human," Jake says.

Perched on the edge of a bundle of hay, twitching, itching to pace. Getting up, sitting down. Smoothing his damp hands against his pants legs.

In the middle of the night, with Ax in the rafters. Jake's temporary eyes in the sky keeping watch silently from above.

With Rachel pacing, swearing under her breath, nearly running from one side of the barn to the other, her so strides fierce, so forceful.

Cassie and Marco still out looking, searching.

_Human_.

What are you supposed to say to something like that?

Tobias, as a human. Tobias in a human's body standing on that damn bridge. Tobias, alive enough to make his way to the middle of the city, but not enough to contact his friends?

His friends who were worried. Who searched every day for a broken hawk body. Who got to know the surrounding woods and mountainside far better than anyone should.

Who searched the yeerk pool, the back roads, the edges of the city.

_Maybe he was hiding._ You thought, foolishly. Maybe he was upset and ran away. What could have happened?

Jake didn't know. Ax didn't know. Ax, who managed to morph safely behind a dumpster, and lifted off with a flurry of wings over the heads of pedestrians. Who didn't see Tobias in the air. Who didn't see Tobias lying crumpled, on the ground.

Ax, who looked for his friend, drawing slow circles over rooftops as he called out in thought-speak.

Who wandered over the city and saw no red-tailed hawk. Nothing in the sky. No Tobias.

Just the back door of a white ambulance shutting half a block away.

* * *

Several minutes later, with Marco still demorphing as Rachel's ranting grew, Cassie came up with the first suggestion.

And she asked, in a vacant way, as though the thought was only half-formed and couldn't possibly be,

"Maybe we should call his uncle?"

* * *

Midnight, in his old clothes, in his old room.

In his old bed, as if nothing had changed at all. As if there was never anything but this, midnight with the lights turned off and the window open.

With the faint chirps of crickets and distant tires going past drifting through his window, the nighttime lullabies just the same as Tobias remembered. The smells just the same, just the same.

And yet.

Putting all his weight on his good leg as he leaned out the window, staring up at the sky. Resting his chest on the windowsill to stare past streetlamps and homes with darkened windows.

The sounds were just the same, the smell as his memories told him.

But.. something was missing.

Where were the sounds of mice running through the grass? Scurrying over the pavement? Where were the silent owls, the nighttime predators?

Where was his sky? With a million, million tiny lights so bright Broadway could never compare.

His body was heavy, slow. Cumbersome. He lurched from place to place, stumbling as he walked. He squinted so much his eyes were never more than half-open.

He started at loud noises, sudden movements. He jerked his head at people when they spoke to him.

His hands were thick, clumsy. He dropped pens, papers, his spoon, his fork. His perception was skewed, he reached too far, he wasn't far enough. He tripped, he fell.

He was human.

His arms still sore as ever, his body still healing, just as worn and tired. His left leg throbbing with pain as he leaned against the wall, out the window.

Resting his head against the windowsill and staring up the sky, Tobias finally falls asleep.

* * *

_' ' I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human. ' '_  
- David Bowie

* * *

"There's money in the kitchen and pizza in the fridge," his uncle tells him when Tobias wakes up to a pair of brand-new crutches leaning against his bed.

Sometime between midnight and dawn the soreness of his body had pulled him from sleep into such a stiffness it was all he could do to fall the short distance to his bedsheets.

And, still half-asleep and too tired to be motivated for anything more than blinking bleary eyes, Tobias stares up at his uncle.

His uncle who thinks about what was just said, and hesitates at the doorway, fidgeting, tense in the awkward silence of not knowing the right thing to do, to say, before leaving the room.

Tobias rests back against the pillow as he listens to the sounds of his uncle in the kitchen, opening and closing doors. Walking through the house.

Opens his eyes again to see food on his nightstand, soda beside it.

* * *

_I woke up._

_Great. Another day._

_The couch I was sleeping on was saggy in the middle and smelled of cigarette smoke. But my uncle had gotten drunk and passed out on the floor in my room. So I took the couch._

_It was okay, at least that way I could watch TV till I fell asleep._

_I was wearing a T-shirt and shorts. I needed to find something to wear. My uncle doesn't do laundry, I do. So I knew exactly what I had available. A nice collection of stuff that could make me look like a complete dork or a complete lowlife, my choice._

_My uncle also doesn't buy a lot of stuff for me. I'm what you'd have to call "low priority" in his life. Half the stuff I had was stuff he'd thrown away. Or else stuff I'd picked up from my aunt's attic whenever I was shuttled off to be with her for a few months._

* * *

You killed Loren.

You nearly killed Tobias.

What are you supposed to say to your nephew now? I'm sorry, I was drunk? Do you think that would make any difference? You were always drunk. You were never there, not when it counted.

_Loren was never there either._

Loren was lost in her own mind. What more can you expect?

Do you tell him about the AA meetings? How hard it's been, every day? How you worried over him? How you wondered what became of him. What made him leave.

Was it you?

You never were the best. You didn't know how to care, how to love. Tobias was your own flesh and blood, but you couldn't be there for him.

Isn't this the sort of situation where you're supposed to try and pass off control? Send him to his aunt's. Send him away, run from the responsibility.

You don't know how to be a father, to be the family he needed. Needs.

The words are burning a hole in the back of your throat, choking you, burning up your eyes so hot so strong but you just can't. You just can't bring yourself to say it.

Say, _I'm sorry._ Say, _I was wrong._ Say, _Can you ever forgive me? I'm not sure I can even forgive myself._ Say, _I don't even recognize the man I became, the man I was, am now._

To say, _I love you._

_Can you forgive me?_

Your hand lifts, reaches for the boy. Falters in the space between.

* * *

The phone rings in the middle of the afternoon, waking Tobias again.

He drifted in and out of sleep all through the day, and only vaguely remembers his uncle standing in the doorway of his room, oddly hesitant. Standing, uncertain, staring.

Tobias reaches for the crutches, still leaning against his bed, his blurry vision unfocused from the lingering of sleep as he gropes the air, missing again and again.

Until he finally grabs hold of the wood, and pulls it close.

Shifts in bed, ignoring the pain of his leg, his side, the stiffness and soreness as heavy as the bones in his body as it all becomes so natural, so routine, as to be a thing which he can block out easily.

A distraction.

The shrill call of the phone stops, suddenly, while Tobias is still pulling himself upright. Positioning the soft pads under his armpits as he balances himself. Lurches forward and up.

Totters back and forth as his bulky human feet, his awkward human body balances against him. All blood and bones and unnecessary weight and flesh.

But, standing.

He can still remember the vivid feeling of being lighter than air, less than gravity itself. Of flying, having that unattainable freedom of wind and sky and clouds so close he touched heaven itself.

_You rose above everything in the world. All your problems, all your worries._

And now, earthbound. Now he had to fight just to move.

* * *

There are bills on the coffee table, a book wedged under one of the legs, and cigarette butts all over the house.

There is an air of forced cleanliness about the place, as if it would be more normal to see loose piles of old boxes and trash obscuring the floor than the scrubbed, stained carpet.

The kitchen clean and empty, countertops chipped and marred, but devoid of anything save the afternoon light which spills over tiles too old to reflect back.

This, Marco and Jake find when they knock at the front door and Tobias calls out in reply, _"Come in."_

And they do, stepping carefully into the room, cautiously, as if by moving slowly they can prevent Tobias from leaping to his feet and running off.

Marco opens his mouth, has the words half-formed when a sideways glance at Jake sends them scurrying out again in the form of warm human breath.

Jake, who hesitates, before gently sitting next to Tobias on the couch. And waits, uncertain.

And Tobias, not looking at them, still not looking as he reads through a letter that was on the coffee table, was addressed to him.

* * *

_' ' We'd been down too long. We'd never reach the sky again. We were going to die in darkness, to sink and sink back to the cold, lightless, lifeless ocean floor._

_Buried alive in water. ' '_  
- The Exposed, by K.A. Applegate

* * *

It's signed, _DeGroot, Senior,_ with an address he doesn't recognize from a lawyer's office he's never heard of.

And the words are so fanatical, so impossible to believe that Tobias just can't wrap his head around it all.

It's got to be a trap, a trick. _Things are never so simple_, he thinks uneasily as Jake touches his shoulder. Startles Tobias out of his own mind and into awareness.

Into the reality of Marco staring at him with an odd look on that face, eyes only half-open in thought.

Jake, sitting next to him, touching his arm, staring at the bruises still there from the crash. His nose scrunched up as he too thinks, but doesn't speak.

The concern and pity so sharp on their faces Tobias could draw it with a pen.

Oppressive silence lapsing into minutes before Jake looks up from the long scratches, the still healing marks, the cast, to look Tobias in the eyes and ask,

_"Do you need anything? Is there anything we can do?"_

Tobias frowning in reply. Chewing on his lip before slowly shaking his head from side to side. Memories of school with his head in the toilet resurfacing, _now of all times_ to haunt him.

Marco drawing attention to himself by shifting from one foot to the other. Marco who frowns at Tobias, wearing such a serious look, his thoughts could almost be read as clearly as they form.

Who then, arms crossed, head tilted, brow furrowed, trying to understand, asks the question that had been haunting their minds all this time.

"What happened to you?"

The words sticking in his throat, too big to swallow, too hard to say, choking him even as Tobias opens his mouth to speak.

_You'll never know who your mother was._

The tears well up, unbidden in the corners of his eyes as Tobias shakes his head almost subconsciously. Closes his mouth, folds up the letter and stuffs it between the seat cushions.

"I.." the sudden dryness making it hard to breathe. He swallows, tries again, and says with no conviction in his voice, "I fell."

And chews his lip.

* * *

Months later, Tobias still limps when he walks.

He is sitting in the back of the local library, his back to the wall when Ax finally finds him. Looks up with a page pinched between his fingers as Ax inquires lightly,

"Isn't this usually the time humans attend school?" and sits down on the floor beside his friend, looking at the book resting open between Tobias' legs.

.."Yeah," he finally replies, with something like a smile. "Usually."

Ax thinks he understands, nods. And says, "You are hiding."

Tobias waits, page still held tight, then smiles honestly when no more is said.

The morning light combing a pathway through and around them, Ax asks what Tobias is reading, and in response Tobias shifts the book so Ax can read and begins explaining the story to him.

And there they stay until the library closes, Ax leaving quietly every two hours. And coming back a few minutes later to sit again with Tobias in the quiet space between bookshelves in the fading light from the window.

Neither of them really human. Both, just wearing the skin.

* * *

The letter burns a hole in the back of his pocket, until Tobias finally takes it out and burns it with one of his uncle's lighters. Staring at the flames so transfixed that he doesn't notice how wild the fire is until the heat sears his fingers.

Making him drop the rest of the flickering red mass. And stare at the leftover pile of ashes.

These, Tobias keeps in the drawer of his nightstand, in his room next to his bed.

_My father is dead,_ he thinks to himself. What does the rest matter?

* * *

His uncle is always there, waiting, when Tobias comes home. Always stops whatever he's doing - watching TV, writing out checks for bills - to look up at Tobias. To say, _How are you? How have you been?_

Always has dinner waiting. Reaches out an arm for Tobias to take, to hold onto as he walks. An arm Tobias ignores uncomfortably as his uncle talks to him. Cares for him.

He doesn't know what to do with love, this boy.

Something sits uneasy in the pit of his stomach as Tobias ignores the hesitant glances. The tentative touches. The lingering attempts at contact that his uncle seems determined to try.

Tobias can't meet his uncle's uncertain gaze, can't claim forgiveness or even hate.

He just waits for this to pass, staring to the side at the wall. Hiding deep inside his own mind, where no one can find him.

* * *

Jake carries Tobias' books at school, holding onto Tobias' shoulder with a pre-determined grip that needs no encouragement.

Marco on the other side of Jake, his silent stare so far worse than any crude joke that it cuts straight through Tobias' spine to coil like barbed wire around him.

Making him stand straighter. Look away from his friends. Try to shrug his arm away from the warm hold.

He just doesn't understand love like this.

* * *

On wild nights, when lightning streaks across the sky and the rain pours so heavily through his open window that the carpet beneath is soaked, Tobias wonders where Dude has gone.

_Did you run away too?_

The notion won't leave him be.

* * *

"Were you there?" Tobias eventually asks, weeks later, so soft the words are almost lost.

"Where?" Marco asks, hearing.

But there is no answer. Tobias is already gone, his eyes vacant.

* * *

Tobias stays out until late.

So late that he sees more sunrises than sunsets. Wandering through the city, the woods. Walking all the way to Ax's coup. Walking up the mountain. Down the streets.

The lamps lighting a pale path for him.

Stumbling slightly, still limping as he looks through darkened windows. At billboards.

Trying to ignore just how unsettling the sight of the sky is now. Trying to ignore the paleness of the night, the stars. Trying not to rub his eyes, to squint.

Some nights he doesn't come home at all.


End file.
